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Gillard, Rudd launch national curriculum

ELEANOR HALL: The Prime Minister and his deputy and Education Minister, Julia Gillard, launched the first draft of Australia's first ever national curriculum this morning.

The draft covers the teaching of English, maths, science and history from kindergarten until Year 10. Children will be taught phonics and grammar, as well as Aboriginal and Asian history and the Government is inviting public comment on the curriculum before it is introduced into schools next year.

But already the Australian Education Union has attacked the Federal Government for a lack of consultation.

Sabra Lane has been at the launch in Canberra and she joins us now.

So Sabra, the Prime Minister pointedly said the Government had to do more to deliver on its promises. He said this on the weekend. Was this launch part of that effort?

SABRA LANE: Certainly was Eleanor. That is exactly how the Prime Minister kicked off his press conference today when he talked about the launch of the national curriculum. He said the Government needs to lift its performance and he believes that delivering national curriculum, one of the key policies that Labor promised to introduce before the 2007 election, he said they were delivering on that key election commitment today.

So he said that for the first time in the Commonwealth's 110-year history that this is the first time that all states and territories will share the same curriculum. He said that there had been a lot squabbling and fighting, that it had been tough delivering this kind of reform, echoing the fact that a number of the policies that the Government has tried to introduce over the last two years has been a tough effort indeed but he said unashamedly, that it was a case of back to basics, that things like phonics and grammar were coming back into vogue under their policy.

Let's now listen to what the Prime Minister had to say.

KEVIN RUDD: Getting the states and territories to agree over a long period of time on a single national curriculum with basic standards in it has been really, really hard. There has been a lot of resistance. There has been a lot bureaucracy. There has been a lot of people getting in the road. That is the first thing.

The second is over a long period of time, I think what you've seen in different states across Australia is pretty patchy standards emerging, pretty patchy standards. Let's just be frank about it. Various states have tried to fix up these holes on the way through whether it is on literacy or whether it is numeracy or other areas but over a period of time a whole lot of, shall I say, less-than-adequate standards and less-than-adequate content has crept in.

ELEANOR HALL: That is the Prime Minister at the launch of the national curriculum this morning.

Sabra, the Prime Minister says that he wants this in schools next year. What is the process for that to happen?

SABRA LANE: Well, the process now is that they have put this draft out for public feedback. It is available now on one of the Government's websites and now for the next three months until the end of May, it wants to hear from everybody.

It wants to hear from parents, it wants to hear from teachers who are teaching this material to students and Mr Rudd says that they will take account of all this feedback because he did acknowledge this morning that there may be the need to shake further gremlins out of the national curriculum.

But also that this, the draft now will be taught in 150 schools around Australia from today for the next three months so they will get an indication of what things need to ironed out and what policies they believe they are on the right track with.

ELEANOR HALL: Did Kevin Rudd say anything to head off criticism that the history curriculum could be seen as politically correct?

SABRA LANE: Certainly, that was one question that was put to him and Julia Gillard during the press conference. Indigenous history and Asian history will be taught to students from Year 4 in fact. They will be learning about first Australians.

The Prime Minister deflected to the Education Minister and she said this couldn't be viewed as neither a black-armband view as history more a white-blindfold view of history.

It is important that history is not the only subject that they have looked at today. It is English, maths and science as well but she also deferred to Barry McGaw, Professor Barry McGaw who is the head of the Australian Curriculum Assessment Authority who has been in charge of putting this national curriculum together. He said that they have widely consulted in putting this curriculum in place.

Let's now hear from Professor McGaw.

BARRY MCGAW: We have been very careful to make sure that we had balanced voices at the table as we started. The original draft of a shape of the curriculum in history was crafted by a team that included school-based people and historians that might be characterised as left or right.

We had John Hirst and Tony Taylor and Stuart Macintyre in that group. Now that is a diverse group of eminent historians.

And what they brought forward is a proposal that, for example, with respect to Aboriginal and Indigenous or Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island perspectives, that their history should be represented in the curriculum. Their history before the arrival of Europeans and upon the arrival of Europeans, their perspectives as well as those of the settlers.

The settlers' perspectives are part celebration. It is not black armband in that sense at all. It is people travelling enormous distances and setting up a whole new country in a hostile environment on the one hand but there are Indigenous perspectives on that as well and we are covering both.

ELEANOR HALL: That is Professor Barry McGaw, the head of the Government's national curriculum agency.

Now Sabra, despite those comments there about consultation, the Australian Education Union is already criticising the Government for a lack of consultation. Did the Prime Minister or the Minister for Education respond to that?

SABRA LANE: Yes, Julia Gillard said that she expected that they would be hearing the different views from the education union and pointed to the fact that already the union had been resisting, that the My School website that the Government launched earlier this year which ranked schools and performances.

She said that the Government is absolutely determined to make a difference to children here. That teachers aren't particularly top of mind here. She said that they want to make a difference to every child in every school and that is their particular focus and she said they had no apologies for doing that and she is absolutely determined to make sure that the Government delivers on that.